According to Walter J. Ong, there are three eras of communication. First, there was the era of “primary orality”, which was before people had writing and had to rely on receiving their information by word-of-mouth. Since they did not have anyway to transcribe information that they heard, they had to rely heavily upon their memory in order to process and retain the information they received. Second, there was the “literate era”, when first writing and then print revolutionized human thought and life processes. When a new symbol system called the “alphabet” was developed in Semitic tribes in the area near Greece around 1500 B.C., accompanied with the vowels that were added in 700 B.C. by the Greeks, the modern alphabet was born and allowed langua

In the same story of the two girls who were kidnapped, as stated before, the incident happened on Thursday morning around 1am on August 1. Within a couple of hours, the story was being broadcast on the radio, television, and the Internet as well. Local and national radio stations, that give news updates every 20 minutes, were broadcasting the story within an hour or two after the incident happened. Television stations such as CNN and MSNBC were all over the story as well. And websites such as www.ap.org, www.msnbc.com, www.cnn.com, and a host of others were covering the story at a very rapid pace. Also, the reason the kidnapper, Roy Ratliff, was caught shortly after the abduction took place, was because of another post-literate era vehicle called ‘Amber Alert’, which uses radio and TV bulletins and electronic freeway signs to announce the abduction. The alert was issued shortly after the kidnapping was reported. And within 12 hours after the abduction took place, the girls were rescued and the kidnapper was dead. Television did provide inside information not seen in the newspapers such as interviews with the boyfriends of the two kidnapped girls, interviews with prosecuting and district attorneys about why the kidnapper, Roy Ratliff was out of jail when he was wanted by police officials for the rape of his 19 yr old step-daughter, and an interview with an F.B.I. agent, Tom Parker, on how well the "Amber Alert” system worked to help them find Ratliff so quickly. All of these people appeared on a news show on MSNBC called “Nachman”, hosted by newsman Jerry Nachman, along with the LA County Assistant Sheriff, Larry Waldie, who praised his deputies for the work they did in bringing this whole ordeal to an end. Also, they showed press conference footage of the mother of one of the kidnapped girls, and the father of the other girl, who both were glad

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